2013 Walston Chubb Award for Innovation
Dr. Chad A. Mirkin—the Director of the
International Institute for Nanotechnology and George B. Rathmann Professor of chemistry at Northwestern University—is the 2013 recipient of the Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation.
A world-renowned nano-science expert, Dr. Mirkin is best known for his development of spherical nucleic acid (SNA) nanoparticle conjugates, nanoparticle-based bio-detection schemes, the invention of Dip-Pen Nanolithography, and contributions to supramolecular chemistry.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Mirkin has authored over 500 manuscripts and over 444 patents worldwide, and has founded four companies: Nanosphere, NanoInk, AuraSense, and AuraSense Therapeutics, which are commercializing nanotechnology applications in the life science and semiconductor industries. At present, he is listed as the most cited chemist in the world (Thomson Reuters), and the top most cited nanomedicine researcher in the world (Nanomedicine Registry).
Dr. Mirkin has been recognized for his accomplishments with over 80 national and international awards including the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award, a National Institute of Health Director's Pioneer Award, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the Harvard University E. Bright Wilson Prize, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Young Investigator Award.
Under the Obama Administration, Dr. Mirkin is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science & Technology and the only chemist to be elected to all three US National Academies (the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering. In addition, he is the founding editor of the journal Small, one of the premier international nanotechnology journals, and he has co-edited three bestselling books.
Dr. Mirkin holds a B.S. degree from Dickinson College and a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University. He was a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to becoming a professor at Northwestern University in 1991.
Since 2006, Sigma Xi has presented the Walston Chubb Award for Innovation to honor and promote creativity in science and engineering. The award carries a $4,000 honorarium.